The lethal fallout from a botched operation by the US Department of Justice which allowed almost 2,000 illegally purchased firearms to be transported from the streets of Arizona to drug gangs in Mexico has been laid bare in a scathing Congressional report, which concludes that it resulted in countless deaths.

A mixture of arrogance, over-confidence, and staggering ineptitude by the Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives [ATF] was outlined in a 51-page investigation by two Republican members of a House panel charged with getting to the bottom of what went wrong during a two-year operation called "Fast and Furious".

This is news now - the alternative blog media has been reporting on this situation since at least4 February 2011

It tells how, between 2009 and this year, the ATF instructed agents to turn a blind eye to hundreds of AK-47 assault rifles, sniper rifles, and revolvers purchased from gunshops in Phoenix and en route to Mexico. They hoped to eventually recover them from crime scenes and build a complex conspiracy case that might take down the leaders of a major drug cartel.

In the event, the operation resulted in the arrest of a handful of small-time crooks. But it exacerbated an already-huge spike in violence on both sides of the border. Two of the guns allowed to "walk" into the hands of criminals were used in a shoot-out that killed a US border patrol agent, Brian Terry.

Bear in mind this insanity was perpetrated by the same people who think Ronald Reagan should have been impeached over Iran-Contra. Congress needs to find the idiots who dreamed up this nightmare, give them a fair trial, then lock them up and throw away the key - S.L.

Don't forget the other(possibly only?) goal of this fiasco---undermining the Second Amendment by creating a crisis to exploit. The Administration was no doubt giddy at the thought of using stacks of dead Mexican Citizens to justify sweeping restrictions or even better signing on to the U.N. Small Arms Treaty.

One more instance to add to an all-too-long list of AFT abuses.It is far past time to defund and disband this rogue loose-cannon agency. The collusion and conspiracy involved in expediting thousands of felonies, (strawman purchases) places the Agency directly in the sights of the RICO act. Further, it makes ATF an accessory before the fact in the murder of Brian Terry, and all the others killed by those guns. This criminal agency must be stopped, dead in it's tracks.